Adolf Lazi - Collection of Corbeau and Renard assembled by Gerd Sander Part II London Friday, May 16, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    From the Collection of the Lazi Family

  • Catalogue Essay

    Adolf Lazi, born in 1884 in Munich, Germany, was initially trained as a sculptor. His appreciation of precision, his rigour, craftsmanship, and sensibility for material formed his photographic eye at an early stage. At fourteen he started to use the camera and when working as a draughtsman and sculptor, he was able to take photographs of the manufactured products. Lazi was fascinated by the sculptural rafinesse of nature’s products which he rediscovered through the lens of his camera. He saw structure as the elemental secret of construction of matter which he wanted to be recognized and mirrored by the photograph.
    In 1906 Lazi opened his own studio for technical photographs and soon won a first prize for a gum print. Encouraged by this major milestone, he moved to Paris two years later where he was first hired – however technically exploited – by Nadar’s son. He subsequently worked and flourished under Mr. Benjamin from whom he received significant creative and financial support. Lazi’s combined gum prints received the Grand Prix in Gent just before the outbreak of World War I forced him to flee to Germany. Upon the end of the war, Lazi settled in Freudenstadt, and started to take landscape photographs of the Black Forest.
    Although Lazi built up a considerable reputation in Germany, he left for Rome to make his series of architectural photographs. Back in Germany in the late 1920s, he opened a successful studio for architectural and interior design photography in Stuttgart, taking advantage from the expanding demand for architecture and interior design photography by well-known magazines. Lazi’s honest, clear, sophisticated style of lightening, and technical expertise attracted an international clientele and provided him with important commissions from the harbour and oversee-ship industries. He spent weeks taking photographs of ships and harbours in Italy.
    Lazi’s masterpieces were created from 1929 onwards when he was inspired by oversized heads he saw at the Fifo-Exhibition in Stuttgart. He began his life-time endeavour of the building and photographing of life-sized heads and received public recognition when first showing them at the GDLexhibition in Heidelberg. The continuous flow of industrial commissions in the 1930s enabled Lazi to build a big light modern atelier meeting the demands of modern advertising large-scale photography. He further developed his lighting technique and produced large scale portraits of human beings as landscapes or – as he called them, soul-maps. Adolf Lazi died in 1955 in Stuttgart.
    These vintage installation groups offered for sale were acquired by Gerd Sander directly from the Lazi Family in the 1970s. The interiors show commercial projects ranging from the exterior shots of the Scheufelen Fabric Factory in Lenningen and the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin in the 1930s.

73

Selected Room Interiors

1930s
Sixteen gelatin silver prints.
Each approximately 22.9 x 16.5 cm. (9 x 6 1/2 in).
Each with credit stamps on the verso.

Estimate
£8,000 - 10,000 

Sold for £10,000

Collection of Corbeau and Renard assembled by Gerd Sander Part II

17 May 2008, 3pm
London